Cynthia Robins:  

After Bexley, I went to the University of Michigan for two years in the music school, transferred to the English department and then transferred to Ohio State where I finished up, graduating in 1961 and got married the same year to a classmate at Bexley. Our marriage lasted nearly ten years. We had two boys, Harlan and Danny, both of whom went to Bexley High School. One son is gay and partnered up; the other is recently divorced but has two beautiful kids who are both at Bexley High School, just like their parents and theiir grandparents before them. . When my first husband and I were firest divorced, I worked briefly for a small entertainment PR firm and got noticed by the entertainment editor at the Columbus Dispatch where I was hired as an arts critic and later on the TV columnist. I began my 35-year journalistic career in 1973, freelancing theater, movie and music reviews. In 1977, I left Ohio for San Francisco, hired by the Hearst paper, the San Francisco Examiner, where I stayed for almost exactly 25 years. For that paper I was, at different times, the TV editor, a general assignment style writer, the fashion and beauty editor and a feature writer for the Sunday magazine which was my favorite job because I could write, long, really long. Like 10,000 word stories that took a month to research. One of my favorite assignments was being on the team that covered the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta. Living on the West Coast after my 37 years in Ohio was like being dropped in Cloud Cuckooland without a compass. What a totally different kind of city. Living on the edge of the world in a liberal place with a large artistic and gay community was bread and butter for a writer, and it provided a constant source of material for my Examiner stories. My job gave me entry to all the wonderful things about San Francisco -- the opera, ballet and symphony; the breath-taking scenery; the outdoor activities and like-minded people who reveled in creativity and odd-ball pursuits. It was also Ground Zero for earthquakes and I lived through the Loma Prieta quake which was not as terrifying as it would have been had I been home, but I was in a car, on my way to the Bay Bridge series at Candlestick Park between SF and Oakland. It was like being in a low rider only the scenery was wobbling back and forth. I was basically a celebrity journliast for 20 of my 25 year tenure. I got to meet and interview more than 1500 famous people. My favorites: Gene Kelly, Cher, Dominick Dunne, Tony Curtis, Tammy Faye Bakker. My least favorite: Burt Reynolds who attacked me -- tore up my notes, threatened me physically and attempted to break my fingers. All because I asked him about his divorce. Not a nice guy. Probably overmedicated on Vitamin V (Stoli) and not Xanax. I wrote a story about it and the national tabs picked it up. I was stalked by photographers for ...Expand for more